Press Releases

Canon U.S.A., Inc. To Provide HD Broadcast Equipment For NBCUniversal's Coverage Of The London Olympic Games

Canon HDTV Lenses, PTZ Cameras, and Canobeam To Enable NBC With Exceptional Optics and HD Video Quality During Coverage of the London Olympics, July 27, 2012 - August 12, 2012

NEW YORK, April 16, 2012 – Canon U.S.A., Inc., a leader in digital imaging solutions, will provide more than 75 HDTV Lenses, two PTZ HD Cameras, and a Canobeam HD Video Transceiver system to NBCUniversal during its coverage of the 2012 London Olympics from London, England July 27 - August 12, 2012. The announcement was made today by David Mazza, Senior Vice President, Engineering, NBC Olympics and Larry Thorpe, senior fellow, Professional Engineering & Solutions division of Canon U.S.A.

The Canon HD lenses that are being used at the various venues of the 2012 London Olympics include: XJ95x8.6B and XJ86x9.3B long-zoom HD field lenses with Canon's Optical Shift-IS image-stabilizer technology; XJ27x6.5B and XJ22x7.3B HD studio lenses; HJ22ex7.6B and HJ14ex4.3B portable ENG-style lenses; and HJ40x14B Image Stabilized and HJ18x28B Super Telephoto portable EFP-style lenses with full servo controls. Additional Canon HDTV production technologies to be used by NBC include the XU-80 remote-control robotic pan-tilt-zoom HD point-of-view camera systems, and the Canobeam DT-150 HD Free Space Optical bi-directional wireless video transceiver system to relay full HD video without compression or delay across physical gaps where fiber cables or microwave links cannot be used.

"Canon is honored to once again be NBC's choice for lens manufacturer," stated Larry Thorpe, senior fellow, Professional Engineering & Solutions division, Canon U.S.A. "Canon has supplied NBC with lenses for its Olympic coverage since 1992 and we look forward to working with them in the future as well. A wide variety of Canon's most advanced field, studio, and portable HD lenses will be used by NBC Olympics to image the action at the many summer sports venues in London. Canon remote-control robotic HD cameras and a Canobeam Free Space Optics HD video transceiver system will also be instrumental in this effort. A complete team of Canon service professionals will also be on-hand with NBC in London to ensure a positive production experience."

"We are pleased to be working with Canon U.S.A., Inc. on the 2012 London Olympics," said David Mazza, Senior Vice President, Engineering, NBC Olympics. "They are a reliable vendor and critical to our ability to provide thousands of hours of coverage over 17 days."

"Canon HD lenses provide a wide selection of focal lengths that enhance our coverage of the Games," noted Chip Adams, VP of Venue Engineering for NBC Olympics. "Canon delivers great telephoto and wide-angle performance with their 100x and 86x field lenses, which can zoom in on the faces of the athletes to capture those moments in time when you can see their emotions as they prepare for competition. The Canon wide-angle HD lenses are very good, in that you can get up close but still maintain a wide field of view and not lose the backgrounds when you're in a challenging shooting situation. Canon's Canobeam is also a great tool to have. It works every time you plug it in, and it's been a lifesaver, especially now that the wireless spectrum is so crowded. You don't need a license, you can deploy it relatively quickly, and it uses standard interfaces. It's a great tool to have for short-haul uncompressed HD video transport. For all the games we've done with Canon, I've never had a single problem with their lenses. Canon's level of support is, in my opinion, probably the best of all the equipment manufacturers in the business. They always have a couple of technicians on site in case something does happen."

Canon U.S.A., Inc. is neither an Olympic sponsor nor a partner of any organization, including the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the London Organizing Committee for the 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (LOCOG).

About NBC Olympics:

A division of the NBC Sports Group, NBC Olympics is responsible for producing, programming and promoting NBCUniversal's Olympic coverage. It is renowned for its unsurpassed Olympic heritage, award-winning production, and ability to aggregate the largest audiences in U.S. television history.

Having produced every Summer Olympics since Seoul in 1988 and every Winter Olympics since Salt Lake City in 2002, the networks of NBCUniversal are synonymous with the Games in the United States. In 2011, NBCUniversal acquired the U.S. media rights on all platforms to the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics, the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, and the 2020 Summer Olympics. At the conclusion of the 2020 Games, NBCUniversal will have presented 17 total Olympic Games and 11 consecutive, the most for a U.S. media company in both categories.

NBC has won an unprecedented 91 Emmy Awards for its Olympics coverage, as well as a prestigious Peabody Award for its presentation of the Beijing Opening Ceremony in 2008, which USA Today said was "the best overall Olympic experience ever provided by a U.S. network."

In addition to its unsurpassed heritage and award-winning production, NBCUniversal is known for aggregating large Olympic audiences, as nine of the top 11 most-watched U.S. television events of all time are Olympic Games presented across the networks of NBCUniversal. The Beijing Summer Olympics rank No. 1 with 215 million viewers.

About Canon U.S.A., Inc.

Canon U.S.A., Inc., is a leading provider of consumer, business-to-business, and industrial digital imaging solutions. With approximately $45.6 billion in global revenue, its parent company, Canon Inc. (NYSE:CAJ), ranks third overall in U.S. patents registered in 2011† and is one of Fortune Magazine’s World’s Most Admired Companies in 2012. Canon U.S.A. is committed to the highest levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty, providing 100 percent U.S.-based consumer service and support for all of the products it distributes. Canon U.S.A. is dedicated to its Kyosei philosophy of social and environmental responsibility. To keep apprised of the latest news from Canon U.S.A., sign up for the Company’s RSS news feed by visiting www.usa.canon.com/rss.

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† Based on weekly patent counts issued by United States Patent and Trademark Office.

All referenced product names, and other marks, are trademarks of their respective owners.